Blogging the End of the World™
By Rob Taylor CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest living organism, is under grave threat from climate warming and coastal development, and its prospects of survival are “poor,” a major new report found on Wednesday. While the World Heritage-protected site, which sprawls for more than 345,000 square km (133,000 sq miles) […]
By Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) – People want to save the planet but are unwilling to make radical lifestyle changes like giving up air travel or red meat to reduce the effects of climate change, a straw poll by Reuters showed. As leaders gear up for another round of climate change talks later this month […]
By Sanjida O’Connell …According to a UN report in 2005, long-term cancers caused by Chernobyl will eventually kill about 4,000 people: an alarming total, but less than predicted. In fact, in an age of “dirty bombs” and nuclear proliferation, Chernobyl functions as a grim experiment into the consequences of extensive nuclear fallout. Although radiation levels […]
Stagnation Glacier, early 1990s. Note the light-colored ‘bathtub ring’ against the darker, lichen-covered rock. Bylot Island Glaciers, 1948-2009 Technorati Tags: Canada,global warming,climate change,glacier,deglaciation,Arctic
If current melting trends continue, the Arctic Ocean is likely to be free of summer sea ice by 2015, according to research presented at a conference organized by the National Space Institute at Technical University of Denmark, the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Greenland Climate Center. The estimates, which are consistent with some models presented […]
By Dan Box We are entering hurricane season again. As I write, the first of this year’s crop are working out their fury over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans while, in New Orleans, anniversary ceremonies are being held to mark the harvest claimed by Hurricane Katrina four years ago. … Catastrophe bonds are, depending on […]
By James Chapman Britain faces the first widespread power blackouts since the 1970s because of looming energy shortages, Government documents reveal. For the first time, ministers are expecting that the supply of electricity will fail to meet demand at peak times. The Government is forecasting that by 2017 there will be power cuts of around […]
‘We all live on the Greenland ice sheet now. Its fate is our fate’ By Patrick Barkham at Sermilik fjord, Greenland It is calving season in the Arctic. A flotilla of icebergs, some as jagged as fairytale castles and others as smooth as dinosaur eggs, calve from the ice sheet that smothers Greenland and sail […]
By Stephen Adams Pollack, the fish with such a poor reputation that Sainsbury’s deemed it needed a name change, has become one of the country’s most popular seafoods. Figures released by Seafish, set up by the Government to promote the fishing industry, show it is now the eighth most popular fish to eat. British consumers […]
Contaminants from natural coal deposits in the Gulf of Alaska are not easily bioavailable, unlike the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez tanker catastrophe, according to a new study. The findings challenge the theory that natural coal deposits were the cause of observed environmental damage. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) pollutants were blamed for the continuing […]
